MicahJohn

After a long night of packing, cleaning, etc, Friday morning Julie Miller rode out with us to the Dullus airport in order to drive our van home for us. We flew Jet Blue to New York. We had plenty of time in the JFK airport to play a little frisbee, eat a little food, and sleep on benches designed to make sleeping impossible.

We loaded up on our Air India flight. The whole taxiing process took over two hours due to mist related backups at air traffic control. The great thing about flying with another nation’s airline is that you get a bonus international meal or two. We had spicy mutton, yogurt, rice, and some soupy desert. Along the same lines, we had the opportunity to watch Bollywood in-flight films.

Customs went very smoothly. Because there were nine of us all wearing tie dye they directed us to the empty group line. Hurray for skipping lines (legitimately)!

God’s goodness showed up in the car rental process. They had misplaced our reservations and therefore didn’t have the size cars we had requested, so we got slightly larger cars for the price of smaller ones. With nine peoples luggage, bigger (at least to some extent) is better.

Driving on the left is different. It is pretty easy to drift left and clip curbs. Making wide right hand turns is weird too. You can all pray that we don’t put any nicks in the rental vehicles.

The place we are staying this week is amazing! It is rented in one week blocks. It has its own kitchen, washing machine, and yard. What is crazy is that renting all these rooms, yard, and appliances is cheaper for our family than staying in a hotel.

Due to snow and the cost of rescheduling nine plane tickets, Judah missed commencement. We all went to Baccalaureate Thursday night. We wore tie dye so that everyone would know we were with Judah.

After the service we ate ice cream with and were prayed for by our small group.

My family and I are leaving for the UK in two hours. I’m excited. The trip comes at just the right time. Baruch is old enough to walk around for a whole day without a nap. Mom and Dad are young enough to do the same. I’m not in Thailand yet. Judah isn’t in Mexico. Nathanael isn’t married.

We found Nathanael’s passport before 1:00am. God is good!

I’m in the midst of a quick reread of The Universe Next Door by James W. Sire. I’d read this worldviews catalog for a worldviews class a few years ago at Messiah College.

I appreciate the way Sire traces the way different worldviews flow into and out of each other both historically and philosophically. The Universe Next Door examines the ways in which deism was a bridge from theism to naturalism; the ways naturalism leads to nihilism; and the ways existentialism provides escape from nihilism.

I stopped skimming and started reading when I got to the chapter on existentialism. I think Christian existentialists’ approach to paradox is helpful. Certainly a contentment with paradox is dangerous. We must be guided by God’s word. God is infinite, we are finite, won’t our interaction at times seem paradoxical? Sire gives helpful balancing insight from Francis Schaeffer, “we can have substantial truth but not exhaustive truth.”

God certainly wants us to use the minds given us. God does not intend for us to make leaps of faith in the sense of abandoning reason. He wants us to include the deepest most permanent truth of God’s eternal presence in our reasoning. Sure, building a big boat in the desert looks unreasonable if those are all the facts, but if a wise trustworthy God shows up and says to build a boat because the whole earth is going to flood, what else is reasonable?

I also affirm the Christian existentialists claim of truth in story, in narrative. I do not support the contentment with any apparent death of objective truth. Again, God gave us our minds. It does matter if something did or did not happen. The Christian existentialist is in error if he doesn’t care if indeed Christ was raised from the dead (1 Cor 15), but the one who sees truth in the Chronicles of the mythical land of Narnia, is wise.